Canadian luge team members launch new book promoting the sport to kids

Vicki Hall, Calgary Herald10.21.2013

Canadian World Cup luge team member Sam Edney reads with students at a media event at Olympic Heights School in Calgary on Tuesday. The event was also used to launch a children’s book focused on the sport, called Lucy Tries Luge.

Funny as it may sound, Canada is not exactly an international powerhouse when it comes to feet-first tobogganing in the Olympics — otherwise known as luge.

With depth the rest of the world can only fantasize about, Germany dominates the sport like none other.

But Alex Gough and Sam Edney envision a day where Canadian kids grow up with dreams of ripping down a frozen canyon of ice at speeds over 140 km/hour in pursuit of Olympic gold.

To that end, Gough and Edney unveiled a new the children’s book Lucy Loves Luge — written by Calgary-based author Lisa Bowes and illustrated by James Hearne, also of Calgary — Tuesday at Olympic Heights Elementary School.

In the book, Lucy, the protagonist, overcomes her fear of sliding when she jumps on her sled for a speedy adventure.

“I just think it’s great for kids to be able to know about all the sports in the Olympics that Canadians compete in,” says Gough, the first Canadian-born athlete to win a medal at the luge world championships “Especially for kids in Calgary with all this available to them.

“With the facilities from 1988, they have so many opportunities that other kids might not have.”

Gough fell in love with the sport as a teenager when her mom signed her up for a recruitment camp and dropped her off at Canada Olympic Park for a weekend.

“I didn’t even know what luge was until I was trying it,” says Gough, 26. “Now these kids in kindergarten and Grade 1 can learn there’s tobogganing, and there’s luge which is a step above that.”

Once an after-thought on the international luge scene, Gough headlines a Canadian team expected to contend for the podium at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Gough, Edney and seven other athletes have combined to win 19 World Cup and four world championship medals over the last four years.

Gough took up the sport at age 13, so she figures there’s no telling what Canadians could do if they graduate from the toboggan hill in elementary school.

And while hockey will always remain the national obsession, Edney thinks Canadians need only channel their love of tobogganing onto the luge track.

While the speeds are greater and the terrain less forgiving, the concept is the same.

“It’s in our blood in a way,” Edney says. “I remember how much I loved the speed going down the toboggan hill. That’s the one thing that really captured me the first time I tried luge.

“You get to the bottom of the track and you feel that excitement and that rush — the same rush you feel as a six-year-old kid bombing down a toboggan hill.”

Thanks to sponsorship from the Olympia Trust Company, Bowes has arranged for 1,500 copies of the book to be distributed to all kindergarten and Grade 1 classes under the auspices of the Calgary Board of Education.

And maybe, just maybe, some of those children will grow up dreaming of being the next Alex Gough or Sam Edney instead of the next Jarome Iginla or Taylor Hall

“Luge recruits at age 8,” Bowes says. “I’d like to think the kids who grow up playing hockey when they’re not practising or playing games — they’re still on their sleds, still on their toboggans.

“Everyone in our country enjoys sliding down a hill. I’m just hoping this sparks something in their imagination that they can actually go to the Olympics.”

With the Sochi Olympics just 106 days away, Canada’s luge team is preparing to open the World Cup season next month in Norway

Canada will field four women’s singles sleds, three men’s singles sleds and one double Two-time Olympian and multiple World Cup medallist Gough will lead three Canadian women on the national team. She is joined by Arianne Jones, 24, Jordan Smith, 20, Kim McRae, 21, all of Calgary.

On the men’s side, veteran Sam Edney, 29, is joined by 18-year-old rookies John Fennell and Mitchel Malyk, all of Calgary.

Canada’s s most successful doubles tandem of Tristan Walker, of Cochrane, and Justin Snith, of Calgary, will round the national team’s charge for the podium.

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Canadian luge team members launch new book promoting the sport to kids